


A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, Fake Character Death, Fake Funerals, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Not Really Character Death, Secret Identity, keeping secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 07:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3479846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky attends his own funeral, and Sam thinks he's really dead.  Bucky has to preserve his cover, and they don't work it out.  Set after Fear Itself, at the very beginning of the Winter Soldier series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt meme on tumblr; the prompt was: "things you said too quietly."

Going to your own funeral, as it turned out, was a trip and a half.  Bucky wasn’t sure if he should be there (Fury and Natasha had been against it), but how many chances was he going to get at this, after all?  Bucky had decided that the next time he might actually be dead, so he should seize his chance to experience the thing for once.  See what people said about him and all.

Halfway through, his cheeks were burning and he was tugging his hat down over his eyes and sinking into the scarf around his neck, and that was just after Steve had said his piece.   _God_ , he found himself thinking,  _I’m so glad I insisted on telling him, hell_.  Steve’s eyes had been shining and glassy, and his jaw had seized, working, and he already knew, for chrissakes!

And then Sam got up there and if Bucky hadn’t wanted to die already, he did now.  This had been such a frigging bad idea.  Though he wasn’t planning on telling Fury he was right, nope, not going to happen.  Natasha, maybe.

Sam looked terrible.  Really terrible, like he hadn’t been sleeping right, maybe, haggard and thin, and Bucky’s stomach turned over with a sickening wave of guilt.  This wasn’t right.  This just—wasn’t right.  Sam wasn’t supposed to be mourning him like this.  This had never been how it was supposed to be.  (Sam had Steve back, that was supposed to be enough—)

But he looked wrecked, just torn up, and then he started talking, and it was even worse.  ”I didn’t know Bucky as long as Steve did,” he said, and his voice was  _hoarse_ , and fuck, fuck this, fuck  _him_ , “and at first I admit, I had my doubts, but he proved me wrong in every way he possibly could have.  Steve Rogers has some damn big shoes to fill, but here comes along this punk kid, I thought, this  _ex-assassin_ , and there he is, filling them.  He wasn’t the same kind of Cap Steve was, not at all, but he was every bit as much Captain America.”  He took a deep breath, and his voice shook, and Bucky felt about two feet tall.   _Sam …_ he swallowed hard.

Bucky didn’t deserve all this, this stuff, not from Sam, who thought he was really dead, who he’d lied to, was lying to.

Sam’s voice thickened, choking.  ”And,” he said, “he was my friend.  I never would have expected it, and I don’t know what it is about me that I keep hooking up with these soldier boys from the 1940s, but he was one of the best friends, I—” he stopped, swallowed, bowed his head.  ”—I ever had,” he finished, and Bucky dropped his head into his hands, rubbed them up and down his face, back up into his hair, under his hat.   _One of the worst, Sam_ , he thought.   _One of the worst_.  He was doing this to him, how could he be doing this to him?  When he looked back up, through his fingers, Sam was smiling a little, wavering and crooked, and it was one of the worst things Bucky had ever seen.  ”We got into the craziest shit,” Sam said with a little laugh, “and I swear half the time neither of us had a plan, but I wouldn’t change any of it.  Not for the world.  Bucky Barnes was,” he swallowed, “he was someone it was a privilege to know, and that’s the truth.”

Bucky was the absolute worst.  Irrefutable proof.  Sam went on, and on.  He told a few highly edited stories about them working together (and that was totally not true, Bucky _had_  had a plan), about them playing poker, about one night when Bucky had ended up sitting against the wall of Sam’s apartment and telling him all about the war, their attempt at making breakfast together in the field, and through it all, Sam’s eyes were shining and wet and his voice was scratchy, and he was smiling, as if remembering Bucky made him  _happy_.  Even now.

Bucky forced himself to stand there and listen to all of it.  It was the least he could do, after all, the least he could do for Sam.  And by the end of it his chest hurt, a lot like it had from the wound that had almost killed him in the first place, and his throat hurt, and all he could think was that he had to do something, but he didn’t know what.  He stood there, frozen to the spot, until everyone was starting to leave, and only then did he manage to shake himself into moving.

Sam was lingering, staring at the grave, and then he just touched the top of the headstone and was starting to walk away with the others.  In Bucky’s direction.  Bucky stared at him.  His tongue froze in his mouth.  ”Sam,” he wanted to say, “it’s me.  It’s me, I’m alive.”

He started to say it, his mouth shaped the words, but they were so quiet the air stole them away, and his hands clenched into fists.

He couldn’t.  He would—he would tell him later.  This mission wouldn’t last forever.

Not forever.

He watched Sam go, his slumped shoulders, his hands in his pockets, and felt like the worst kind of failure.

"I’m sorry," he told the air.  "I’m so sorry."


End file.
